Journal article

Parafoveal magnification: Visual acuity does not modulate the perceptual span in reading.

    2009
Published in:
  • Psychological Science. - 2009, vol. 20, no. 6, p. 721-728
English Models of eye guidance in reading rely on the concept of the perceptual span—the amount of information perceived during a single eye fixation, which is considered to be a consequence of visual and attentional constraints. To directly investigate attentional mechanisms underlying the perceptual span, we implemented a new reading paradigm—parafoveal magnification (PM)— that compensates for how visual acuity drops off as a function of retinal eccentricity. On each fixation and in real time, parafoveal text is magnified to equalize its perceptual impact with that of concurrent foveal text. Experiment 1 demonstrated that PM does not increase the amount of text that is processed, supporting an attentional-based account of eye movements in reading. Experiment 2 explored a contentious issue that differentiates competing models of eye movement control and showed that, even when parafoveal information is enlarged, visual attention in reading is allocated in a serial fashion from word to word.
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département de Psychologie
Language
  • English
Classification
Psychology
Other electronic version

Publisher's version

License
License undefined
Identifiers
  • RERO DOC 27178
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/301978
Statistics

Document views: 38 File downloads:
  • PM_Miellet_ODonnell_Sereno_PsychSci_09.pdf: 147